21 June 2025

Posted by Amelia

Junior & Young Writers: Week 8 - Lost Civilisations

Hi Writers,

We started both sessions off by describing our weeks as types of drinks and what we were reading:

Young writers

Leo - A bottle of liminal space

Daisy - Cup of disappearing tea

Georgie - Coke and mentos

Catherine - Vodka as a metaphor for forgetfulness

Berry - The end of the apple juice carton

Berry - Saving neverland series

Georgie - Powerless Lauren Roberts

Leo - Stately ghosts of england by Diana Norman

Catherine - a webcomic called ‘Marionetta’

Sonny - Sherlock holmes and lord of the flies

Daisy - Powerless by Lauren Roberts

Junior writers

Eddie - Piping hot coffee (on account of the heat)

Evan - Liquid gallium, a metal that becomes liquid at room temperature

Indie - A crisp and refreshing sprite

Anna - One thousand litre fizzy drink

Henry - One that has no countdown and explodes

Juno - A glass of desert

Eddie - Sunrise reaping by Suzanne Collins

Evan - Five nights and freddies book 3

Indie - The great crisp robbery by Emily Snape

Anna - no book

Henry - When the world disappeared

Juno - Oh a night book series

With the junior writers, we played a fun game called "Write Around the Table." Each person

started with a sheet of paper and wrote the first sentence of a story. Then they folded the

paper to hide what they had written and passed it to the person on their left, who added the

next sentence without seeing the one before. We repeated this process until everyone had

contributed. The results were wonderfully bizarre short stories- many of them featuring

recurring themes like coconuts (thanks Anna!). We also played a relaxed round of "Buzzy

Buzzy Bees."

Next we moved onto the first part of our focus on lost civilizations! For this Frankie talked to

us about The Indus Valley Civilisation (c. 3300–1300 BCE) Location: Modern-day Pakistan

and northwest India. Famous sites: Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa. Why it’s interesting: Highly

advanced urban planning (sewage systems, grid cities). Their script is still undeciphered!

Why it collapsed: Possibly due to climate change, river shifts, or gradual decline—still

debated.

After learning about this real life lost civilization we had a go at inventing our own Language,

so everyone took their time to create an alphabet from scratch, most using a mix of symbols,

numbers and punctuation to create an alphabet, this includes Sonny's - letters within letters,

and Berry’s language that used humans dipped in clay and pressed against huge pieces of

paper to create her alphabet.

Next we spoke about fictional lost civilizations where Frankie walked us through Atlantis

Location: Said to be ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules’ (possibly near the Strait of

Gibraltar)—no confirmed real location. Famous for: A powerful, advanced island civilization

with magnificent cities, palaces, and technology far ahead of its time.Described as rich in

resources, with canals, temples, and even flying machines in later legends.

With these attributes in mind we went onto creating a Civilization to write about (in the

languages we created!) We had Eddie’s civilization that valued- beauty and ham

sandwiches, and it boasted technology from the year 2100. Everyone had to have a name

with ten letters in the civilizations language too. Anna’s civilization valued love and nature

but had cats who ate and kidnapped children! Eek!

Our last writing exercise was to write about our civilizations being found... or about how they

got lost!

Georgie’s civilization remained hidden. Leo’s people who invented ‘hating Jean-ism’ fell to an

interesting demise... and Berry’s world was found, but swiftly cursed.

Both the Junior and Young writers did brilliantly to be imaginative and excited as they were

considering it was one of the hottest days of the year so far!

See you all soon

Amelia :)

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Junior & Young Writers: Week 8 - Lost Civilisations